


In All The Ways We Serve

by Sildominarin



Category: Cadfael Chronicles - Ellis Peters
Genre: Alternate Universe - Witchcraft, M/M, christian witchcraft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:21:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28124535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sildominarin/pseuds/Sildominarin
Summary: Cadfael works with more than plants and roots in his workshop. In time Hugh will learn to accept it.
Relationships: Hugh Beringar/Brother Cadfael
Comments: 3
Kudos: 27
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	In All The Ways We Serve

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DoreyG](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoreyG/gifts).



It was a brilliant October day, more resemblant of spring than early autumn, when Brother Cadfael -laboring peacefully in his small domain- first heard his name being hailed.

The sky was a brilliant blue marked by only a slight gathering of clouds that might herald the return of the rains that had plagued the summer of 1160, and the unseasonable warmth that had thus far chased away early frost and offered a small window for more work to be done in the abbey gardens before winter closed in and made such labors impossible. Under the snow the herbs and green growth that gave life and healing to his many potions would slumber beneath their blankets of straw, protected against the biting cold until spring could once again renew his garden and he could begin that work again.

And the work was as much a balm to him as his vocation had ever been. It was an ever renewing miracle -in his eyes- that he should return from his crusauding from the Holy Lands and find that such a sanctuary was available to him. Returning to the sword under Manduit upon the shores of what may as well have been his own country -close enough to Wales to be comfortable if not truly good Welsh loam- had proven out his distaste for a life of combat, and so the opportunity to maintain his own small domain and practice those skills he had learned in those years was doubly welcome.

For it had been all he had needed when he'd first come back, a man lost in the tide of what he had done by the cross to which he had once sworn. A sanctuary of green amidst the creations of the Almighty, where he might bring all that he had learned in his travels to bear in service to others. The hot and unforgiving sun of the Holy Land had witnessed the change of him from boy to man, a transformation as immutable as rock to iron and equally transformative. He was no more the Cadfael of Wales when he'd returned home than the moon was to the sun, and for that changed person the abbey was his all in all. The hours and tasks of the day shaped him even as much as the work he performed around them, and they made him content. And as the monk rose slowly to face the figure walking with sure -if slower- steps up the path to his workshop, it was a sanctuary that had never felt less ephemeral as a familiar figure approached. It had been a good summer for the Deputy Sheriff of Shropshire. Not above the middling height though he might have been Hugh more than made up for it in the speed and agility of his lean frame, and a season spent under the sun had brought out notes of color in his dark hair and reflected back those same hazel hints in dark eyes that missed very little. And while it may have been the reflection of that same sun just now cresting its zenith, Cadfael flattered himself his friend’s gaze still warmed as they settled on the brown robed figure among the plants. For all that had passed between them, he counted Hugh's friendship among the most important of his life and would not likely cast it aside.

For it had been the same deputy sheriff who had requested Cadfael's aide only three days prior, caught in a snare of a mystery between three persons who stood together over the body of a fourth. Bren Thaler may have been only the younger son of a cobbler in the foregate, but Simon Baxter was head of the baker's guild and his word was respected. He and his wife Muriel swore that he had been at their home the Thaler household had been ransacked and its strongbox looted. Against William Thaler's fury that it had been his own ungrateful son trying to cheat his brother of an inheritance and flaunting a relationship with a married couple in town there had been no question who the crown or Sheriff Prescote had chosen to believe. Which had made it all the more damning when the elder Thaler had turned his hammer onto Bren, and struck a wrathful blow 'for justice' before Hugh, Cadfael, and Sergeant Warden.

The cry of it had seemed to shake William from his fury, and in the still shock of the moment he had fled from the confines of the shop. A trained man of the sword did not rest idle by for too long, and Will Warden had shouted his challange and followed the suspect. Hugh had seemed torn between the chase and the still victim before him, but as Cadfael had dropped to his knees to inspect the wound the deputy sheriff had finally knelt as well to offer what aid he could. Which had been more hindrance than help to Cadfael, for the young man on the ground before him needed all the skills he had learned in the Holy Land-- and not all were those that Hugh Beringar was familiar with.

_The first time he had seen Miriam lay aside herb and knife for greater talents when a wound was too deep, every part of Cadfael had been offended and outraged. He was a crusader, a man of the cloth come to regain the Holy Lands from the invaders. He rode for God on this holy mission, and yet here was a woman before him using black arts in a way that was in every way counter to his purpose. But as the woman he had even in his young naivete come to love chanted out words too ancient for him to know and held the small jasper crescent in her hands, the awe of seeing her patient made whole rendered him mute. It was magic, the kind whispered about by soldiers on the long crossing. Sorcerers wielded black spells atop their minarets, they breathed, and so must be burned or starved out to bring hte light of God to the heathens of the east. It was justification and calling to their entire crusade, but never in those stories on the seemingly endless seas had any old campaigner made mention of healing in those spells._

_When the sailor had made his thanks for Miriam she had closed her curtains and turned to the Christian stranger who had made her home with her. Her face had made no hesitation toward him, and in the face of that quiet serenity he had at last found his voice._

_"I do not understand. What power do you have, how did you heal so great a wound with only words? Tell me Miriam that it is not some black art that you practice--"_

_"There is no darkness in healing. It is no different than the Creation that lies in herb or root from which we pry our survival. Did not Allah give us those, to bring comfort and succor as we can? This gift is no different, nor its ways any less a blessing for those it is worked on. Mohammed, alayhi as-salām, says that Allah gives us all gifts in our turn to serve others. This is no different."_

_He had had no answer for her, shocked still and awed by what he had seen, and Mirian had only smiled. Taking his hand she led him out into the market, her words a quiet promise that all would be well, and when he was ready to accept she would teach him the ways his own God had meant for his gifts to be worked. And over time, as she laid bare the mysteries of the work she had learned, Cadfael had seen the miracle of Gods gift of healing himself, and accepted for himself that her words were right-- as they so often worked._

_What he might have called witchcraft she called a wonder._

When after the ten years he had spent among the Holy Lands on his own odd crusade he had returned to her home on the street of the sail makers she had made him welcome again, and completed his education in all manner of things before he returned to the lands of his birth. And there had already been a gift between them, though neither had known that a child of both their blood blossomed between them, but when he took up his bag for a final time she had pressed a far different carving into his hand. The cross was orthodox, different in its styling than the ones he served now, but the jasper symbol was purpose and meaning enough. She had taught him what he needed, and it was his own to practice. English soil was hardly a place where one might routinely call upon the gifts of Creation and not risk reprisal from all corners, and so when he had returned and been welcomed to the abbey his craft had taken on a different form. Into each potion and compress and tincture he laid a portion of himself, a spark of the gift and the wonder of all Miriam had taught him, in constant service to the Almighty. It was in the same way as holy and devout for him as the offices of the day, and in all ways did he serve the God he had sworn to as a young man but only grown to know as an older one.

But there had been no time to impart those mysteries, nor the lifetime of understanding that came when heaven was constantly in view to Hugh Beringar as they both knelt by Bren Thaler. The young man's skull was most certainly damaged, and for all that he was almost certainly a thief and a liar still Cadfael had been in the world forty years and more; he knew the love Bren shared with Simon and Muriel Baxter was no less true for their odd number, and that he had meant no ill in trying to find that happiness. Certainly no ill that could merit an execution, nor was the deputy sheriff who knelt by him with bleak eyes likely to met out such a punishment. It would have been a waste of a young life, of a young love, and as the pity had rushed through him Brother Cadfael had moved without thought. 

The cross was always in his script, more talisman than touchstone on most days, but his work worn hands found it with ease. Clasped before him, herbalists bad forgotten, he had chanted out the prayer of the rite more by rote, ignoring the questions that had poured from his friend's lips. A life was always worth the price no matter the cost, Miriam had insisted, and she had been right.

"Christ before me, Christ within me, Christ Above me, Christ below me, Christ at all my sides. The three who are in the earth, the three who are in the ground, the three who are in the heavens. The three who are in the pouring out of healing, be at my side and in my hands. My sacred fortress in thee be encircling me."

And he had felt the rush of it, of that power and the Grace that came with it. Reaching out a hand to the bloodied hair he had rested his palm on the wound. There he could feel the young man, lifes blood pouring away from him, and pushed against it. The words that came from him then were older, so much that even Miriam could not translate. They were from her mother and her mothers mother and the line all the way back to the beginning, that held the power for the gift that the prayer opened. The power that leeched from him then to heal Bren Thaler, who moaned and twitched beneath his hand.

And the power that had Hugh Beringar gone sheet white and stepping back just as Sergeant Warden had shouted his success at the capture. There had been no time to discuss it then, but as they had parted ways -one path to justice and the other to the abbey- Cadfael had suspected that it would not stay thus between them long. 

And it had not been. Looking out on the path as his friend Cadfael laid his spade aside and shook out his skirts. "You might come inside, my lord beringar. I have a new wine waiting."

“I hoped I might find you out here, Cadfael. Do I keep you from Nones?” There was a tension in his voice and face, but glancing at the deputy sheriff Cadfael saw no anger and took heart from it. 

“No less than I keep myself, for there is work enough in the garden before the frosts and I will make the prayers to God in my own time."

They moved inside together, and Cadfael took a quiet pleasure in the familiar ritual of filling their goblets before sitting at the work table. Hugh took his gratefully, staring into the liquid as though both the questions and the answers that he sought were there. There was much the monk wanted to say, to fill the silence that stood between them, but instead he stayed quiet until the younger man looked up.

"Tell me truly Cadfael, for I have not slept in two days over it. Do you...are you a practitioner of...God's wounds, Cadfael, are you a witch?"

And oh the parallels between himself in those halcyon days were stark, even as he shook his head and leaned over to settle a hand on Hugh's wrist. "Let me speak plainly for this is the truth. I am and have ever always been faithful to the almighty, for He is the only monarch I have served. Served in all ways, and in this I am no different, for all I have ever done with what I know has been for His glory and his children. I have never worked anything against his purpose."

"Alright. Alright." Pressing his fingers to his eyes Hugh nodded, a stress going out of his shoulders as he settled into the chair. "I was certain that you had not, but I...was not expecting to see you..."

"Work magic?" At Hugh's huff of half laughter Cadfael smiled wryly. "Neither was I when first it was worked before me. But I serve in this as I do in all things, and that is hand and hand with my sweet green ending here. I came here as part of that service."

In the silence Hugh shifted to grip the hand on his wrist, and as the sun danced through the afternoon the silence was content. 


End file.
